


p.h.do i look like a medical professional to you?

by C_AND_B



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blood and Injury, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-09-01 11:24:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16764196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/C_AND_B/pseuds/C_AND_B
Summary: what if Kara had every single power other than invulnerability, and what if Lena was a complete pushover and kept patching her up despite promising she never would again? tune in and find out (it's gay)





	p.h.do i look like a medical professional to you?

**Author's Note:**

> the blood throughout isn't anything too major but i've tagged and am mentioning again here just as a heads up so you can turn back now if you're not into that but for those of you staying buckle up bitches (I don't know why I wrote that and I equally don't know why I'm not deleting it).
> 
> As per, sorry for mistakes, hope it's not shit, y'all are lovely, enjoy!!

The knock on the window signifies something that Lena really doesn’t want to deal with. She’d had a bubble bath with stupidly priced oils and a face down phone that she literally willed not to ring the entire time - and, for once in her hectic life, it hadn’t. She’d put on her softest pyjamas and poured herself a glass of wine from a bottle she’d been saving all week. This was a night for relaxation and self-love and _two hours of god-forsaken peace_ , not the woman currently banging on her balcony window and the trouble she always brings along in her wake.

And yet, like an idiot, Lena still finds herself settling the glass back on her island, untouched and unenjoyed, in favour of crossing the room to open the door to the cold night air.

“You still haven’t replaced the pillows you bled on,” Lena says in way of greeting. She figures the two of them have gotten past the zone of politeness which required pointless greetings and small talk. Honestly, Lena thinks that they launched themselves way over that line the second they met. She also knows that whatever she says will be taken in stride anyway.

Case in point, the way she receives an eye roll for her comment and a quick quip, “my salary barely covers my rent but give me six years and I’ll have them back to you.”

And then it’s Lena’s turn to cluck her tongue at the sarcasm lacing every syllable. She’d been getting as good as she gave from the second they met too - she was one of the few people in Lena’s life who wasn’t afraid to do that, one of the few people in Lena’s life that she actually allowed to do it.

Although this back and forth always came at a price.

Exhibit A: when Lena turns to take stock of the woman in front of her, what she immediately sees (and wonders how she didn’t spot before) is the way she clutches her side, blood trickling lightly through her fingers and the apologetic grimace on her face.

“Jesus, Kara! What did you do this time?!” It was just one of many questions that Lena had, the most pertinent at this time but still one that had to fight for the forefront. Other fighters included: _How did she do it this time? Why did she do it this time? Was she going to continuing doing this time after time after time?_

“I didn’t actively _do_ anything but I was _thrown_ into something particularly sharp,” Kara argues and Lena doesn’t know why she expected anything less from her - she hasn’t received a straight answer since she met her. Other than her name. Kara had always been very forthcoming with that, incredibly trusting, Lena supposes it was a smart move on her part since it was the only reason Lena had found herself trusting the woman in return. That and what she did for her.

Lena sighs, adding “I’ll get the kit,” as she disappears into her bathroom and collects the item that is nothing like what an ordinary home first aid kit should be, nothing like what her first aid kit used to be like before she was dragged into this whole thing, nothing like she truthfully had any business having but everything that she was destined to need considering her circumstances.

Her current circumstances being the bleeding woman standing in the middle of her living room, looking a little like she was afraid to sit on anything after last time.

Lena takes pity on Kara, leading her to the stool beside her kitchen counter and helping her settle down gently. “Why do you keep coming here? Last I checked many actual medical doctors would be happy to help you. They would also have the actual years of training to do so too.”

“But none of them have your cheery beside manner... and I don’t trust any of them like I trust you.” There it was again. _Trust_. Lena will admit that it was certainly something they’d cultivated since the first time Kara ended up bloody in her apartment, the first time that Kara ever saved someone’s life - that person’s life being Lena’s as she took a speeding bullet meant for her.

It all happened so fast, which is to say that Kara moved at an insane speed. She hadn’t been anywhere near Lena when the gun went off and, as Lena closed her eyes and waited for the pain to come, she realised that it never did and that, instead, the gunman was lying on the floor and Kara had blood dripping from her hand where she had somehow batted the bullet off its course.

Turns out Kara wasn’t as invincible as she was fast.

(Nor did she seem to have a lick of self-preservation).

“You’re lucky you’re pretty,” Lena jokes, a little to distract Kara from the alcohol rub she’s pressing to her skin to clean the wound, and a little because she likes the way it makes Kara blush. That was something else Lena had discovered very early on - Kara was very tongue-in-cheek but, any time Lena did it back, it was like she’d never been flirted with in her life.

Lena breathes a sigh of relief when she realises the wound is pretty much completely superficial, offering more blood than it has any right to. All she really needed to do was stick on a gauze and tell Kara to not get in any trouble for the next few days. Not that she thinks for a single second Kara was going to listen to that advice, she was, in fact, pretty sure that Kara was going to flagrantly disregard that advice and just do whatever she wanted to as always.

(Kara looks for danger like Lena used to look for familial approval).

“How am I looking, doc?”

“Stupid as always, but you’ll live."

Kara gasps, hand on hurt in feigned offence. “Compliment me and then tear me right back down.”

“Can’t have you getting a big head, easier for people to shoot.” Lena flicks her head for good measure, chuckling to herself when Kara, affronted, releases a dramatic groan. She pushes Kara from the chair before her retort has a proper chance to find its footing on her tongue, handing her some fresh gauze and directing her back to the door she entered from (she really wasn’t in the mood to explain this to her doorman). “Now leave, and please don’t come back here again.”

* * *

She comes back.

Lena knew she would, _expected_ that she would, was ultimately prepared for her to again at some point (she’d upgraded her first aid kit to an insanely impressive level if she did say so herself). She just wasn’t very prepared for her to appear right now. Right now was actually the worst time for her to appear because there was only one thing that Lena was really ready for at that exact point in time and that was her date.

She swings the door open when she hears the knock with what she hopes is her most convincing smile. She’ll be the first to admit that she never wanted to go on this date in the first place, honestly what in the world was worse than a blind date? Answer: opening your front door with your best _I swear I’m excited_ smile and finding a beat up vigilante on the other side.

“You look nice,” Kara says, eyes lingering a little too long to pretend she isn’t taking a mental picture of everything she’s seeing, and maybe Lena finds herself slipping to a sharper posture at the gaze, flattered by the attentiveness. Not that she really expected anything less than awe when she slipped into her tight black dress and painted her lips to kill.

Maybe it just meant something more when it was Kara and not some stranger Sam had set her up with in an attempt to make Lena release some tension from her shoulders (something told her the evening was going to have the exact opposite effect now).

“What happened this time?” Lena steps out of the way as she asks the question, watches the way Kara becomes a little indecisive, shifting her weight from foot to foot as she decides if she wants to interrupt the plans that Lena evidently has – or did have, considering she texts an apologetic last minute cancellation message when Kara allows pain to outweigh politeness and steps inside.

“It turns out being bent over someone’s knee isn’t fun when they’re trying to displace your ribs.” Why did she say things like this? Why did Kara always stroll into her apartment with too much swagger for someone injured and then just throw out these jokes like they were nothing? And why did Lena always imagine them in all their glory and blush like a fucking tomato? Short answer: the universe hated her. “I can’t actually raise my arms.”

“You want me to set your ribs?” Lena asks incredulously when she puts the pieces together. “Kara you really need to go to a trained professional - this is getting out of hand.” It actually got out of hand a long time ago. A long, _long_ time ago. To the point that Lena was very honestly wondering why the hell she kept doing this? She had no reason to keep doing this?

All she really wanted to do was run her company with little questioning from her board and make tech that actually meant something and hide from paparazzi trying to take pictures of her outfits to gossip about because apparently that was more important than the good she was doing in the world. And instead she was spending almost all of her free time reading medical textbooks and watching _how-to_ videos and desperately hoping that she wouldn’t need to apply any of the knowledge she was spending hours acquiring.

“Come on, Lena. You’re the smartest person I know and it sure beats trying to do it myself.” It sounds like a threat and that’s because it is. It is one hundred percent a threat. Lena knows for a fact that Kara would most definitely attempt it alone if Lena didn’t help, which puts Lena back where she seems to always find herself, throwing caution to the wind and hoping her minimal knowledge and the YouTube video she pulls up on her phone is enough to get them through this.

Somehow it is.

By some miracle Lena makes it to the point where all that’s left to do is shoddily wrap Kara’s body in saran wrap and attempt to not get distracted by, or touch, her ( _of-fucking-course_ ) perfectly sculpted abs. She fails at both.

“That should do. Not that you should think for a second this means I condone you not going to get checked out by a doctor.” Kara opens her mouth to retort, smile on her face despite the state of her torso and Lena quickly cuts back in. “An MD, not a PhD.”

“But you’re _PhD-lightful_.” Now, as Lena has said many times in her head and out loud to Kara in these moments, she is not a medical doctor in any sense, but she is also fairly sure that soon she’ll have rolled her eyes at Kara so much that they just won’t come back down.

“I can’t believe you just said that.” _She can_.

“You liked it.”

“I really didn’t."

“Of course you didn’t,” Kara retorts, voice dripping with sarcasm and a hint of her testing the waters to see how far she can push Lena before she breaks. Breaks into what, Lena hasn’t quite figured out yet, but if it’s a smile she sure does get close (not that Lena actually lets one loose; she has more self-control than that. _For now_ at least).

“I really want to kick you out but I think you should sit down for a while.”

“You don’t have to think of excuses for me to stay, Lena. You’re reason enough.” Her heart screams in one moment and Lena stifles it in the next. She didn’t have time for that. Not now. Not in general. And not with a girl who appeared at her apartment only when she needed to be patched up because she was crusading around the city like some maniac vigilante.

“Okay, Romeo. I haven’t even given you painkillers yet.” Lena punctuates her words by softly pushing Kara onto the couch and rearranging the pillows to keep her body in a comfortable position.

By the time she returns with the pills she finds Kara already fast asleep on the couch, softly snoring and looking more serene than Lena has ever seen her in their meetings. She might think it cute if she thought about it at all (she does). Instead Lena busies herself wrapping Kara in a blanket and slipping off her own heels so she can relax in the armchair beside Kara’s sleeping form to watch whatever trash was on TV, silently praying that this was the last time Kara will end up beat and bloody in her apartment. For both their sakes.

* * *

The next time Kara turns up, it’s with an incredibly obvious black eye and a new pillow clutched loosely in her hands - Lena very graciously doesn’t mention that Kara actually owes her three as she takes it with a small smile and a resigned sweep of her hand for Kara to enter. It always ended up the same way anyway; she might as well roll with it.

“What injury are you hiding from me this time?” Lena swore if she had to set another rib she was going to call the ambulance herself (except there was absolutely no way she was actually going to do that to Kara and they both knew that - hence why they kept doing this dance).

“Just this,” Kara says with a shrug, pointing to the black eye on display and Lena finds herself struggling to understand. That was why she was here? A black eye? Admittedly it was a pretty intensely coloured black eye - a purple cloud of pain - but really there was nothing Lena could do for Kara that she couldn’t have easily done for herself.

“Surely you had some peas in your own freezer?” Despite her words, Lena still moves to pull some bag or another from her freezer to offer Kara. A bag of chopped onions is taken gratefully with a thankful sigh as Kara presses it to the wounded area.

“It’s mostly full of ice cream but I just really wanted to give you your pillow. Consider it a down payment, and also a thank you. For always putting up with me.” Lena could see the ice cream thing, well, she could, so long as she only considered Kara’s personality and not the insane sculpting of her body which, for god’s sake, was like someone brought Michelangelo back to life and gave him a block of marble from which to show the world what an angel looked like.

_A hot, ridiculously ripped, angel._

“You don’t exactly give me much of a choice,” Lena quips.

“You wound me, Lena Luthor,” Kara returns quickly, feigning hurt, increasingly so as Lena rolls her eyes at the display and hands Kara a beer for her free hand. It’s strange how easy it feels to do so. It’s strange that Lena knows what Kara will ask for if she lists off the drinks in her fridge and strange that she knows the slight tip of the bottle towards her is Kara’s instinctive way of saying thank you even though she’s clearly distracted by something else.

That something else currently being her looking around Lena’s apartment like it’s the first time she’s ever seen it and Lena supposes it probably is. To a degree. This is the first time Kara hasn’t seen Lena’s apartment through a blood-loss haze or the blurry lens of someone who accidentally knocked on the wrong door three times because she couldn’t read the numbers properly.

Lena tracks Kara’s eyes with interest, watching as the other woman scans for family photos that she won’t find unless she were to delve into Lena’s beside drawer, and eyes the paintings on the walls that even someone without a lick of understanding of modern art would know were worth a pretty penny.

She watches as she gets lost in the number of books crammed onto bookshelves that cover an entire wall and the knickknacks that Lena had picked up from her travels and bought as souvenirs for herself (and the handmade ones made by tiny thankful hands at the hospital Lena most certainly didn’t work at but donated to whenever she felt guilty about the wealth she inherited – translation: pretty much all of the time).

Then she watches as Kara’s eyes fall onto the coffee table, barren beyond the single blueprint taking up most of its surface area, decorated with shapes and symbols that Lena knows most minds on Earth wouldn’t be able to decipher even if they tried.

“What are you working on?”

“Something that I’m actually qualified to do.” And now it’s Kara’s turn to roll her eyes in their almost perfectly crafted dance of enchanted exasperation.

“It’s just a prototype I’m working on in my free time.” The free time that she barely ever had. The free time that really just consisted of five minute intervals in busy days and the time in which Lena really should have been sleeping but instead decided the thoughts inside her brain couldn’t remain inside it any longer - she arguably had her most genius thoughts at three in the morning when she was running on caffeine fumes and sheer willpower.

“Maybe you can show me when you’re done?”

“You’re really interested?”

“I think you’re fascinating so by extension anything you do piques my curiosity. Like that talk you gave the other day on the potential application of nanobots in medicine.” Lena tries not to focus on the compliment in there, tries not to think about the fact that Kara is the first person to be interested in her work beyond a business angle in quite some time. Then tries once again to not focus on the compliment. _Fascinating_. Kara thought she was fascinating.

“How exactly did you hear that? The guest list for that particular talk was rather short.” Incredibly short. Like three of the city’s major publications, a few investors and oldest friends of the family (that weren’t short-sighted bigots) short.

“I have good hearing,” Kara mentions offhandedly, brushing off Lena’s suspicion like it was completely normal for her to know these things, like Lena wasn’t going to be scanning through event pictures for hours and wondering if she could finally solve the Kara puzzle.

“I’m sure.” Her words are laced with more than a little doubt but Kara brushes it off with a final swig of beer and an offering of Lena’s half-defrosted onions. Her hands linger in the exchange, her lips half open like she’s working out what to say next, if she even wants to say something next. She doesn’t. Not at first. Instead Kara leans forward and presses a kiss to Lena’s cheek that has no right to be as soft as it is and yet boldly is so anyway.

Briefly Lena feels like everything stills.

She wonders if that’s something Kara can do too.

Stop time.

...

It starts again.

Kara speaks, “I really meant the thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Lena says, softer than she means too and yet, not as soft as she feels. “But don’t think that means I’m condoning all this. I’d really appreciate you never coming here again.”

“You’d miss me too much.” Kara grins, presses another quick kiss to Lena’s face, this one cheekier, more daring in the way it hits far too close to Lena’s mouth. In the way it hits too close and makes Lena have another minor freak-out , one that hasn’t even had a chance to kick in before Kara’s gone and all Lena is left with is a tingle on her cheek and a single pillow on her otherwise bare couch.

_She really did love those pillows_.

* * *

The steam makes her feel calm. The heat of the water splashing against her skin settles her unlike anything else in her life. There’s something so freeing about being in the shower. The water rushing past your ears and blocking out all other sounds. The bubbles running against your skin. The tension dripping from your shoulders like drops of water. The calming isolation.

What makes Lena not so calm is stepping out from the room that holds her watery solace and finding Kara leaning against the counter in her kitchen looking patient as ever despite the state of her - blood trickling from left forearm into her awaiting right palm in an (failed) attempt to stop it from dripping onto Len’s white tiles and _holy shit_ does she look terrible despite the calm look on her face.

Hurt enough that Lena forgets she’s naked apart from the not-quite-long-enough towel and practically sprints across the room to assess the damage. “You’re an idiot,” she says in lieu of asking what happened because by this point she knows all she’ll receive is half truths and mumbled explanations and honestly the news will tells her more of the truth in the morning.

Kara doesn’t come back with a witty retort this time. In fact, she’s eerily silent in the following moments, her gaze pinned but not quite concrete as it aims itself at the stark white of Lena’s towel and _god_ _how much blood had she already lost, how hard had she hit her head_.

“Kara how many fingers am I holding up?”

“One. The middle one, which, _ha ha_ , also do you know you’re only wearing a towel? I’m very aware that you’re only wearing a towel right now.” Lena barely resists the urge to smack her round the head right then and it’s only because frankly it just seems counterproductive. Instead she slinks into her room to throw on some sweats and plait her hair into a haphazard braid before returning to assess the damage that Kara has actually done to herself this time. The completely unnecessary damage that came from her being a stupidly altruistic idiot with a heart of fragile gold.

Kara hisses, _“OW!”_ and maybe Lena did prod her a little harder than she needed to but maybe a little pain, _a little more pain_ , would finally spark some sense into Kara and stop her from her doing this. Doing this and then showing up and asking Lena to fix it. Doing this and then showing up and asking Lena to fix it and doing that stupid pout when Lena tells her to stop being a baby – that one pout that Lena hasn’t quite managed to build immunity to yet.

“You’ll need stitches.” Lena purposefully avoids saying that she’ll do them. She really doesn’t want to have to do them. In her dreams she sometimes sees Kara going to an actual doctor, with actual training, in an actual hospital to patch her up or just quitting this whole thing entirely. Honestly at this point she wasn’t sure which one was less realistic.

“I trust you.” And there it was, the simple phrase that had Lena responding, like the pushover she seems to be when it considers Kara, by picking up a surgical needle and praying to anyone who would listen that practising on a banana in her lunch break was actually going to pay off. She takes a moment to breathe, steadies her hand, finds confidence in the way Kara’s gaze never falters from hers, never suggests even the slightest bit that she doesn’t have full faith in Lena’s abilities.

(It’s ridiculous.

But it makes her start moving again).

“I feel like doctors always talk when they do this, to distract the patient from the fact that there’s a literal needle in them.” They also gave their patients anaesthetic but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

“I’ll listen to your voice as long as you’re ready to offer it to my ears.”

“Exactly how much blood have you lost?”

“Probably too much to be good, but not too much that I didn’t mean that. Cheesy as it sounded.” Lena decides to give the small talk a rest after that, mostly because she’s panicking too much to focus on anything other than her hands and a little because Kara seems to have a gift of making her tongue tie itself in knots at the most inconvenient of times.

Ultimately Lena is pretty fucking impressed with her results, enough so that she plays into the lazy round of applause Kara gives and ends up stupidly curtseying. It’s only when the claps peter off and Lena realises Kara’s eyes are drooping that she switches back into Fake Doctor Lena Mode.

“Hey Superstar, need to stay awake a little longer, just to make sure you don’t die. I really don’t want to have to explain your dead body on my couch.” At least she thinks that’s a thing. She’s pretty sure she’d heard that that’s a thing. Or maybe that was concussions. _Shit_.

Still, despite her confusion, Lena offers Kara up some painkillers and leads her to the couch, throwing her new pillow onto the floor because she wasn’t losing it again after just getting it back and putting on some movie that she really couldn’t care less about.

Somehow, in the end, it’s Lena who falls asleep first. Lena who falls asleep to the background noise of some ridiculous film and wakes up in a serene silence with a brown paper bag sitting on the table in front of her face. It doesn’t take long for her to realise it’s from her favourite donut shop downtown, or that there’s a _thank you_ written perfectly on the side alongside a hastily scribbled _‘xx’._

Lena hates that it makes her chest flutter a little bit.

Like the tiniest, fractional bit.

* * *

Lena can’t breathe.

Logically she knows that she is. She knows that it’s a reflex, that the fact that she’s alive means her body is somehow managing to keep going but she feels like can’t breathe. She feels so certain that she’s not, doesn’t think she’s really felt air in her lungs since she picked up her phone. Can’t remember what it feels like to have her chest rise and fall in a steady rhythm.

_“Your apartment is really far_.”

It wasn’t even the words that made her panic. It’s the tone. The complete lack of humour where there always seemed to be some. The way Kara’s voice sounded so devoid of light, so much unlike the one thing that made it distinctly Kara’s. It was the sharp inhale of breath following the words. The one that sounded laboured. The one that was accompanied by a series of coughs that made it sound like Kara was somehow drowning.

_Choking, gasping, drowning._

Lena moved before the address had even been rattled off, begged Kara to keep talking as she broke every single traffic law in National City in order to find Kara crumpled in some dingy alley, clutching at her side and not quite cognisant enough to make whatever joke had her trying to smile.

It’s not until Lena has managed to get her home that she even thinks to realise just what’s happened. Not until she’s got Kara soaking the sheets of her bed red that she realises it’s a god damn bullet wound. Again. It makes her think of the first time they met. Makes her wonder why Kara ever kept doing this to herself after that day.

But she has no real time to dwell.

She wills the blurriness from her eyes as she notes that the bullet went cleanly through, thanks her lucky stars that it seems to have missed everything major and that she’d made a call to an incredibly sketchy acquaintance the week before for blood bags and an IV stand (she doesn’t even want to think about what she’ll owe Veronica Sinclair for that but at this point she’d pay the ferryman whatever he asked for this to not end badly. She couldn’t live with herself if this ended badly).

She’s still shaking by the time she’s done, unsure if it had even been right, unsure of why she kept doing this to herself, unsure if Kara was even going to open her eyes again. She looked so pale on the bed. Her skin had lost its usual glow, her lips tinted a shade of blue that made Lena hate the colour so fiercely all of a sudden.

She looks worse than she did the first time Lena did this. The first time she laid on her couch and ruined the upholstery – Lena had a leather one now, the suede one in storage for when Kara didn’t need her anymore... whatever that meant. Even as she opens her eyes Lena feels like there’s something missing, wonders if she’ll ever be able to look at Kara without seeing _this_. She blinks and it’s like the image is seared onto her eyelids. She thinks the answer must be no.

“I can’t keep doing this Kara. I can’t keep watching you destroy yourself like this.”

_She couldn’t keep watching and destroy herself_.

“I have to help them, Lena. What’s the point of all these powers if I don’t?”

“You’re not Atlas, Kara. This world isn’t your burden to carry.” Lena doesn’t say anything else after that, just presses her lips gently to Kara’s forehead in resignation and falls into the chair beside her bed, setting herself on guard as she watches Kara’s chest rise and fall for the rest of the night, refusing to close her eyes for even a second until she can’t force them open any longer.

She swears she only falls asleep for a second. It’s a blink more than anything, but it’s enough that when she opens her eyes her bed it clear of any sign that Kara had been there.

Lena wonders where she goes when she leaves.

Then she forces herself to stop wondering about Kara at all.

_She tries, at least_.

* * *

She looks alright. It’s an odd thing to have to note, that someone doesn’t look like they might be sitting on deaths doorstep , but it’s what Lena finds herself doing when Kara next shows up at her apartment door. She looks alright. More than alright. She looks good. And yet the cynic that Lena is has her wondering what Kara could possibly hiding under her shirt.

Another broken rib? Internal bleeding? Appendicitis? Some kind of underlying medical problem that she’d been hiding that she was also expecting Lena to magically know how to fix?

No. That’s not the surprise that greets Lena. Instead Kara offers a half-lipped smile and a slightly battered bouquet of flowers that Lena thinks still manage to be the nicest she’s ever been offered simply because of whose hand they’re in. Still, despite the way it sends a swirl of warmth through her chest, Lena takes the flowers with an air of suspicion, gesturing for Kara to follow her in as she pulls a vase from her cupboard and sets about putting them in water.

It’s oddly quiet. The whole exchange is oddly quiet. Lena gestures wordlessly and Kara follows without sound, rocking on her heels across the island from Lena like she has something to say, like she has a lot to say actually, but can’t quite work out how she’s supposed to go about it.

“Go out with me.” So she decided on the abrupt route. Lena’s mouth drops open and Kara must take it as some sign that this isn’t going to go her way, that it’s going to take a little more than that because she powers through Lena’s confusion with quick words and a raised hand.

“Hear me out. I like you and I think that you like me too because you blush when I flirt with you and tell me to shut up in a way that never really sounds like shut up and because you kissed me on the forehead the other night and I can’t stop thinking about how I wish you’d just really _kissed_ me instead.” It’s cute. The ramble. And the sheer look of hope in her eyes. And the small smile on her face that Lena doesn’t think Kara thinks is half as charming as it is (it’s a little unfair truthfully).

And Lena wishes that she could say yes.

_By god she wishes she could just say yes._

“I can’t.”

“You... can’t?”

“You almost bled out on my bed the other day. And I know that you pretty much always almost bleed out in this apartment but it just felt so much more tangible this time. Like I could physically feel you slipping away beneath my fingers. So no. I can’t go out on a date with you, and care about you, and _love_ you because then it’ll just hurt that much more when you inevitably do something stupid and finally pay the ultimate price for it.”

Lena doesn’t want to think about the inevitability of that, but it’s always what she comes back to.

She remembers reading once that when someone you love dies the problem isn’t that some part of you dies with them but that some part of you is still alive. Still living, still existing without them. Lena doesn’t want to exist in a world where she knows what she’s lost, where she loses herself with it.

“So you’re claiming that if I died now, you wouldn’t care? But if I died after the amazing date I’d take you on, after I’d kissed you, after I’d told you that I think about you all the time, that you would suddenly care? That’s bullshit, Lena, and you know it.” Lena hates that it’s a good point, hates that she almost gives into it right then and there, hates that she can’t.

“I can’t sit around knowing you’re out there killing yourself but I also can’t be the person who tells you that you can’t do this thing that you clearly feel you have to. We can’t be together because, in both of those scenarios, one of us always loses.”

“But we win something greater.”

“I don’t doubt that you’re amazing, Kara. And I don’t doubt that you make me feel something. But this isn’t healthy. For either of us.” Lena sighs. “The flowers are lovely but I think you should go.” She doesn’t know if she expects a fight, if she expects Kara to argue her point harder, if she expects Kara to talk some more sense into her until she can’t fight it anymore.

Whatever she expected, Kara doesn’t. She simply nods and walks straight to the door without another word because she’s a good person. A good person that Lena cares about. But this was the right decision? _Right?_ This had to be the right decision.

It’s about three weeks later when she realises it was a terrible decision. It was a really, really terrible decision. Terrible in the sense that she misses Kara more than she thought she would, in the sense that she panics every single time she turns on the news that Kara will show up on her screen dead. Terrible in the sense that she thinks she should’ve just said yes. One kiss. One date. One anything would be better than never knowing.

She hates not knowing.

Suddenly all she wants is to _know_.

* * *

_I_ _have something for you_.

It’s a cryptic message, more than cryptic, sent to a cryptic number that Lena’s not even sure is still in use, not even sure will get her a response, but prays will. She’s not sure how much longer she can go without one, without at least knowing Kara was still breathing.

She doesn’t have to pray for long. In fact, it barely lasts a second, she hasn’t even put her phone down before she startled by a knock on her window and the face of a sheepish looking Kara. A sheepish looking Kara who is thankfully free of any bruises, not even those pesky half-healed ones that seemed to take up permanent residence on her body.

The incessant tension that had built in Lena’s body over her Kara-less weeks slides away in the same second she slides the door open for the woman to step inside.

“You look surprisingly healthy.” Amazingly so. She looked lovely. The same way she always somehow managed to look lovely. Lena always thought it was unfair that Kara could stroll into her home with any number of injuries and still make her palms sweat a little. She supposed that was more of an occupational hazard of a disaster gay than anything else.

“I’ve been trying to help without my fists. Did you know there are two soup kitchens on this block alone?” She poses it like a question but Lena knows not to treat it as such, she’s simply filling the space where words should be, no doubt thinking about how their last encounter ended. Lena briefly does too until she finds herself focusing on what that all really means, why Kara would do that, and then can’t stop focusing on the way her heart feels like it’s about to enact a prison break.

“Then you probably won’t want my present,” she jokes lightly, pointing to the untouched box on her counter - the same one she’d been staring at for three days wondering if this really was a good idea. Kara’s face brightens. She thinks it might be one of the best ideas she’s ever had.

“No I always want presents,” Kara asserts quickly, reaching out a hand for the box that Lena has yet to push forward. Kara’s brow furrows as Lena pushes her hand out of the way and instead presses the box straight to her chest, but Lena doesn’t get to enjoy the look of confusion for too long before her creation stems out from its holding and spreads across Kara’s body.

She shocks herself a little bit as she stares at it, she really did outdo herself on this one. She’d never really considered herself very good at the aesthetic side of designs but the blue and red worked well together along with the symbol Kara seemed obsessed with burning into things. She was glad she’d gone with the pants too, and the helmet, less of Kara’s body open for someone to hurt, less of herself on show for someone to figure out who was managing to complete such feats.

“You made me a suit,” Kara says, pointing out the obvious, voice coming out slightly distorted from the voice modulator Lena had slipped in at the last minute. _God she really wished she could take credit for how amazing this suit was in public._

“It’s what my blueprint was on - the one you seemed so interested in hearing about. It’s bulletproof, and shock absorbent, and fire resistant, and it helps you breathe underwater, and there’s a comm. in there that links directly back to me, with monitors for your vitals that all get sent right here.” Lena lifts up her phone, flashes Kara the screen lit up with stats she still thinks she has no real business understanding. She presses a hand to the symbol on Kara’s chest after a moment of enjoying her wonder, clicks until it starts fading back into the box, leaving a normally dressed Kara in its wake watching Lena with what she thinks can only be described as reverence.

She doesn’t think anyone has ever looked at her reverently before.

It’s intoxicating.

“You really thought of everything.” Kara pauses, thumbing the box Lena left in her hand, eyes never leaving Lena’s form, continuing, “Does this suit mean what I think it means?”

“I missed you. I kept thinking about other unqualified women tending to your wounds, it made me a little jealous.” It wasn’t a complete lie. Lena’s imagination really did have a habit of running a little wild when she fixated on something - although she’d never really fixated on a person until she met Kara, usually she stuck to things she could understand, things she knew like the back of her hand, things she felt she had complete control over.

“I’d never go anywhere else.”

“Because no one else would be stupid enough to let you in after you ruined their favourite pillows.”

Kara sighs at the familiar joke. “I’ll pick you up another one on our date.”

“The one I haven’t agreed to yet?” And the one they both knew she would.

“I think this suit translates to a pretty big hell yes, don’t you?” Kara asks, waving the box in front of Lena in a mocking way that almost makes her wish she hadn’t made it for her (not really, not in the slightest actually, Lena quite enjoys the cocky smile on Kara’s lips and the way she’d managed to instil the light in her eyes that she stole last time).

“Hell yes,” Lena returns the mock, rolling her eyes just because she hadn’t got to do it to Kara in a while. Kara, on the other hand, seems to have her eyes set on something else she hasn’t got to do in, well, ever, as she reaches forward slowly for Lena’s face and presses their lips softly together.

The moment it happens Lena wonders why she didn’t just do it the second she was first saved by a mild-mannered blonde in a black hoodie, wonders if kissing someone was always supposed to feel like your world was simultaneously being destroyed and rebuilt all in the same second or if that’s just what it was like with Kara. She was sure it was the latter.

...

The next time blood ends up on Lena’s pillows it’s because Kara gets so excited about a movie that she accidentally hits herself in the face and Lena wouldn’t have it any other way.


End file.
